DailyDirt: There's No Such Thing As Free Water

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Americans drink billions of gallons of bottled water each year. Despite a significant fraction of bottled water being simply re-packaged tap water, consumers still buy water is relatively expensive bottles when potable water in generally available for free (or at subsidized prices). Studies have shown that, in blind taste tests, people can't really tell the difference between tap and bottled water. (Wine drinkers have also failed similar kinds of taste tests over inexpensive versus expensive wines.) So here are just a few links on the curious phenomenon of drinking bottled water when equally healthy tap water is widely available.

Tap water

I never understood this "drinking tap water" thing. We are taught since birth that one should only drink filtered or boiled water. I have never seen anywhere without a water filter to get the drinking water.

NSTAAFL NSTAFW

Where does one find "free" water ?????? Unless you are sitting next to a stream and put your face into drink ............ Someone had to do something to get the water to you. And so there was a cost involved. There is no magical "processed water for free" tree.#TIHARTAFLF

Bottled water does prove one thing about copyright.

Arizona

Obviously you've never had the tap water in Arizona... I'm sure in many places its quite fine to drink the tap water. Here in Arizona, at least in the greater Phoenix area, the tap water is horrid. So bad in fact that the city put out fliers on how to make the tap water taste better.

Last year, my great aunt visited from upstate New York, she went to drink a glass of water, she filled a glass from the tap, took one drink and dumped the glass out and said our water is terrible compared to what they get in New York.

They can say what they want about the safety of the water, but the plain and simple fact is, the water around here tastes horrible.

I am a big water drinker, I drink between 2 and 4 gallons a day depending on how much time I spend outside in the heat. Water is the only thing I drink, I dont drink soda, tea or coffee or anything else, except for the occasional Gatorade, but even thats rare.

I've been this way my entire life, its not a conscious decision I make, I just drink lots of water, though for the last 10 years or so, the decision to completely avoid soda and other sugary drinks has been by choice. But, I've always been a big water drinker, and I can tell you that tap water tastes really bad around here. If you ice it down, its tolerable but still tastes bad.

Re: Re:

I live in the west and have generally found the opposite: the larger the city, the better the water quality. But it probably depends on where in the west we're talking about -- the water quality in southern California, for instance, isn't that incredible.